Re: John has been assimilated

Tommy wrote

> This makes it likely that if sapiens and neanderthalis hybridized

(which

> must surely have happened at least occasionally) they either couldn't
> produce fertile offspring, or the offspring was in some way less

viable

> than the parent species.

I have recently seen reports of such a human-neanderthal hybrid in
reports of an excavation in Portugal. The boy died at about 12, and is
unique, so it may be he was some kind of "mule", with developmental
problems that led to his early demise. It is an interesting case as it
disproves the theory that H.sapiens/neanderthal relations were only
beligerant. The fact that they lived side by side for 12,000 years and
that Neanderthalers adopted a Chatelperonnian culture after contact
with the Aurignacians suggests that the relationship was more complex
than an "us advanced" versus "them primitive" one.

Tommy continued

> As for pre-sapiens human species having language - sure, but probably

not

> language in the "modern" sense. This, I think, was invented very
> approximately 50,000 years ago. Before this time cultural change was
> glacially slow (the Acheulean culture lasted more than 1,000,000

years!)

> and there is little if any evidence of art, personal adornment, use of
> symbols or religion, either for H. sapiens and other human species.

Tommy, H.sapiens was in Australia and making art 60,000 years ago, a
feat only possible with libguistic skills. Whilst Acheulian had lasted
1 million years and Mousterian had lasted at least 150,000, it seems
that there was a greater variety in non-lithic cultures than the
uniformity that appears in Stone tools.

> All this changes rather abruptly about midway through the last

glaciation,

> and only for H. sapiens. Up to this time H. sapiens does not seem to

have

> been competitively superior to neandertalers (who displaced sapiens

in the

> Near East when climate grew colder), but by 30,000 BP neandertalers

were

> extinct, also cultural change became at least an order of magnitude

faster

> (most late Paleolithic cultures only last a few thousand years). Many
> archaeologists think that this "change of tempo" marks the invention

of

> fully modern language and I must say it seems very likely.

This is a little an artifact of European and Near Eastern pre-history.
The Upper Paleolithic cultural diversification is observed in Africa
and Australia significantly before it appears in Europe. The 40,000
year horizon with an Aurignacian culture fully formed in Europe was
because of a longer African period in which a number of smaller changes
accumulated over time (eg Body ornament from 110,000 years, fishing
from a similar horizon etc). Just because Europe managed to catchup
bethind its long period of retardedness prior to 40,000 years we should
avoid reading this pattern back onto the rest of the world.

> Language may have been invented once or several times in different

places,

> e. g. in Greater Australia which was populated by 40,000 BP at the

latest,

> and which has always been rather isolated from the rest of the World.

There

> is really no way of telling, though it might conceivably be possible

in the

> future to trace the spread of Upper Paleolithic cultures in enough

detail

> to see if it happened from one or several centra.

Australasia was in fact peopled between 75-60,000 years on latest best
evidence. The Jinimin finds in the Northern Territory of Australia
pushes this back to 90-100,000 years but these results have been highly
disputed and are very controvercial.

Hope this helps
John